Really want to emigrate but how on earth does everyone afford it?

Hi everyone,

have always wanted to go to Oz, went to Adelaide for 3 weeks this year, loved it.

Whole family did not want to come home.

Am now looking into visas etc,

How has everyone funded their move?

How much has it cost?

Thanks,

we are a family of four,

im a child and family health nurse, husband is joiner, kids are 15 and 12.

we also have two small dogs and a cat

It was affordable because of the way we did it at the time. It was just my husband and I, no children at that time. We came with just 4 suitcases and shipped 6-8 boxes over - but no container. My husband had a job to go to straight away, so almost instant pay cheque and our accommodation and a car were sorted for the first 4 months which gave us time to settle, save up more money and I found a job almost straight away. The employer footed visa cost and provided relocation costs - so we didn't pay for much at all ourselves... and no pets - they are expensive to ship.

We also had the added advantage or LAFHA when we came, but that has since been scrapped.

Your kids are probably going to be the issue - by the time you have got around to getting a visa and saving up to move, your eldest will be well and truly on the GCSE/A level merry go round and it might be disadvantageous to kick him off that. You might want to rethink and maybe just take lovely holidays every now and again or wait until the kids have finished school. You could, once you have a visa, take a career break and rent out your house but ball park, you probably need to be able to gamble around £30-50k

Hi everyone,

 

have always wanted to go to Oz, went to Adelaide for 3 weeks this year, loved it.

Whole family did not want to come home.

Am now looking into visas etc,

How has everyone funded their move?

How much has it cost?

 

Thanks,

we are a family of four,

im a child and family health nurse, husband is joiner, kids are 15 and 12.

we also have two small dogs and a cat

We we moved aged 36 and 40 and had accumulated savings by then. Do you have savings? It is something that would be very hard to do without savings for a family of four with three pets.

Most people plan and save for a fair while or use the sale of their house and money from that towards the set up costs. Visa, flights, shipping, your pets, it will all add up. Be prepared for £5,000 or so for your animals if you ship all 3, quite possibly more. TBH if you are on a budget you may have to consider rehoming one or all of them even. Also if renting, too many animals may be an issue with a landlord. And cats are not generally outdoors here, though some do go out, many are kept as house cats due to wildlife (cats do a great deal of damage to local wildlife sadly) and strict cat control regs and so on. And some people consider cats as vermin and don't appreciate your cat in their garden.

I appreciate you may have loved Adelaide and your holiday, but please remember holiday mode is very different from the reality of day to day life living here.

I live in Adelaide and am very happy here but its not for everyone in the longer term and work can be difficult to come by. I seem to recall nursing posts being shed recently and not sure when the new RAH will be opening. Working in the community may also prove a tough nut to crack but you could find it easier. Hard to know tbh. Also, other parts of Aus are nothing like Adelaide, so if planning to head elsewhere, research carefully as it may be a very different climate or feel (ie QLD and the humidity).

All said and done, if you want to migrate you will do your utmost to find a way and perhaps on a tight budget. And be prepared for some tough decisions if that is the case. Research what visas you are able to apply for and what options they give you once in Aus.

If you do it early enough in life, before you have kids and a house full of stuff, you can do it the way Tickled Pink and I did - just the two of you with huge suitcases and a few boxes. If you're short of money like my niece and her hubby were, you squeeze into a studio flat with a mattress on the floor, and buy an old banger with one door falling off, until you're back on your feet.

Unfortunately once you've got an established home and children, it becomes more expensive. You can't make do in a studio flat without furniture, you're forced to spend more money on a place you can all fit into. 'Besides, you've got a houseful of furniture, linen, kitchen stuff etc that cost a lot of money to accumulate - so you'll either have to pay thousands to ship it all over, or thousands to replace it all eventually. If you really can't part with your animals, that's another $10,000 or so to bring them.

I'd agree with Quoll about the ballpark figure. You can delay some of that expenditure by making do with furniture and household stuff from charity shops for the first few years, but you'll want to replace it all eventually.

Bottom line, people do afford it but it will cost you your savings. If you use some of the equity in your home, then you may have to settle for a smaller home in Australia, or a less desirable suburb. Only you can decide whether such a big investment is going to be worth it.

Not necessarily Marissa.

It all depends on the exchange rate you get for your pounds.

Take a look at the application fees here - https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Visa/Fees

That's just the start. On top of that there are medicals, agent fees (if you use one), profession fees to transfer you nursing qualification (lucky for you nursing is relatively inexpensive compared to physiotherapists, doctors, dentists etc), flights (your will be relatively inexpensive - it's your pets who will cost an arm and a leg), shipping, savings to live on while you find work etc. Do not underestimate these costs.

As an aside, we got a cat over here. In Brisbane there are no restrictions unless you have multiple cats, but other areas such as the Gold Coast do. Ours has never brought anything home and the latest research indicates that if they haven't been feral or taught to hunt by 6 months old they make pretty dire hunters. Apparently the oft quoted figures about the amount of wildlife they kill are based on some decades old research in the UK extrapolated from farmyard cats. Urban cats are far different beasts!

Finally, have you any military experience, as the ADF are recruiting nursing officers - https://m.defencejobs.gov.au/recruitment-centre/can-i-join/citizenship/army/ - and they will pay or refund you all the above costs.

It is a very expensive thing to do and you need to research it very carefully and not base it on a holiday. Holiday eyes give a very different view to the view you get by living somewhere. For example, you have been to Adelaide and loved it, but SA has high unemployment and likely to get a lot higher as car plants are being closed.

The forum is an excellent place to research.

It is important that you research the pluses and negatives thoroughly as the cost is high and about a third end up returning to the UK - I am one of them and found myself landing at Heathrow with nothing but a suitcase.

As someone rightly said, ball park figure is £30k to £50k for everything including a few months of being jobless, it goes up with kids and pets and more stuff to move about. We are moving just the 2 of us, with boxes and maybe half a container but in total, with visa fees, agents, tickets and shipping alone it's going to be almost £12k before we even fly out of the UK

With average rentals and monthly living expenses for 2 people in the region of £2k to £3k (for our lifestyle), we need another £30k to keep us going for about 10 months until we find the right jobs. So think carefully as money is a big, massive part of the move

Long commuting times, the heat, poorer housing features/standards, insects etc far outweigh the lovely weather. Personally, dont let the weather and outdoor life be the key reasons for your move, many don't give importance to the family they leave behind and the lack of it once you move all those thousands of miles away from them........

All the best

KnK

Our proposed 2017 migration which includes 5 of us (2 parents and 3 kids under 7) will cost close to EUR 45 K - that also covers Visas and our 2016 reccie trip.

We'll have another lash of cash to keep us going for at least 1 year to 18 months in the case of a double edged non-work scenario.

It ain't cheap for sure but we're thinking of the long game.

B